due to all human beings (the passage,
I take it, is in the book which Colburn called _Lord Byron and his
Contemporaries_); _and when I consider that Moore has been pensioned,
not only in spite of all his libels on him, but perhaps by very reason
of their Whig partisanship, I should think it hard to be refused a
pension purely because I openly suffered for what I had earnestly
said_. I knew George the Fourth's physician, Sir William Knighton,
who had been mine before I was imprisoned (it was _not_ he who was the
royal agent alluded to); and, if my memory does not deceive me, Sir
William told me that George had been gratified by the book above
mentioned. Perhaps he had found out, by Sir William's help, that I was
not an ill-natured man, or one who could not outlive what was
mistaken in himself or resentful in others. As to my opinions about
Governments, the bad conduct of the Allies, and of Napoleon, and the
old Bourbons, certainly made them waver as to what might be ultimately
best, monarchy or republicanism; but they ended in favour of their
old predilections; and no man, for a long while, has been less a
republican than myself, monarchies and courts appearing to me salutary
for the good and graces of mankind, and Americanisms anything but
either. But nobody, I conceive, that knew my writings, or heard of me
truly from others, ever took me for a republican. William the Fourth
saw or heard nothing of me to hinder his letting Lord Melbourne give
me L200 out of the Royal Fund. Queen Victoria gave me another,
through the same kind friend. She also went twice to see my play; and
everybody knows how I praise and love her. _I do not think, therefore,
in reference to the pension, that the public would care twopence about
George the Fourth, one way or the other; or that if any remembered the
case at all, they would connect the pension in the least with anything
about him, but attribute it solely to the Queen's and Minister's
goodness, and the wants of a sincere and not undeserving man of
letters, distinguished for his loyal attachment_. I certainly think
the L500 fine ought not to have been taken out of my pocket, or the
other two L125 either; and I think also, that a liberal Whig minister
might reasonably and _privately_ think some compensation on those
accounts due to me. _I have been fighting his own fight from first to
last, and helping to prepare matters for his triumph_. But still the
above, in my opinion, is what the publi